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The
endeavor that currently goes by the name LEARNING
SITES
actually has its roots in the late 1980s when project founder the late
Bill
Riseman began to realize that there were more uses for his computer-aided
design (CAD) program (called
DataCAD,
with its accompanying simple shading program called Velocity) than making
the process of designing buildings more efficient. He began to apply
his proficiency with the software to the problems of archaeology, working
closely with Dr. Timothy Kendall and Dr. Peter Der Manuelian, then assistant
curators in the Department of Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art, at
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Riseman
slowly started expanding the envelope of what was considered possible with
fairly simple, by today's standards, CAD tools and rendering software,
creating stunning graphics and inventing new applications for the tools
to broaden our understanding and appreciation of the past. From research
to presentation graphics, Riseman used these 'new' tools for reconstructing
Egyptian hieroglyphics faster and with greater accuracy than previously
thought possible and for digitally re-placing entire buildings onto their
original topographic locations. His results were dazzling; and some
of his activities even led to changes in the software code to accommodate
his achievements. He was a true pioneer, innovator, and visionary
in the application of CAD technology and a master of integrating and melding
software and hardware.
Independently, archaeologist Donald
H. Sanders had been pursuing alternative methods of analyzing ancient built environments and seeking the means to express graphically the kinds of interpretations he was developing. From his teaching experience he understood how frustrating it can be to try to explain the nuances of an archaeological site to a group of undergraduates using only traditional visual aids--plans, section drawings, and site photographs. To the untrained eye, ancient sites look like piles of rocks; even to the expert, section drawings of an unfamiliar structure are often difficult to decipher. There had to be a better way of engaging students, of arousing excitement about the past, and of making them truly understand the ancient world from new points of view. Sanders met Riseman at a trade show in Boston in 1992. Each immediately
realized the benefits of the other's expertise. Subsequent to that chance
meeting a close working relationship emerged and the original goals each
had set merged and broadened as they explored what were then merely distant
buzz words: virtual reality, hypertext, and multimedia. However, several
ideas quickly coalesced, including trying to revolutionize public education
and scholarly research, and digitally preserving archaeological data that
is languishing and actually deteriorating in existing archives.
Cultural
Heritage Concerns
Among our fundamental concerns was the on-going destruction
and loss of cultural patrimony taking place both in materials housed in
collections and in those remaining at archaeological sites around the world.
The following three different circumstances exemplify the impetus behind
our initial experimentation:
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First, the destruction of excavated antiquities can
be documented, for example, using photographic evidence in the site archives
of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In a slide of Tomb G7560 in the
Cemetery of Giza, Egypt, the image shows the condition of the hieroglyphics
located on the north wall of the tomb as of June 29, 1929, during excavation.
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Also in the archives is a second slide of the same
set of hieroglyphics taken in August 1989. By this time the top part
of the scene had almost completely peeled off, and graffiti had been scratched
over and below the remaining hieroglyphics.
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A second slide (also from the archives of the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts) can serve to illustrate the loss of primary evidence
about excavated sites. The museum collection has a glass negative
showing part of the Cemetery of Giza as of 1912.
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Upon comparing a print from the negative taken also
in 1912 with a second print taken from the same glass plate in 1993, it
was too clear that significant degradation of the original image had already
taken place. Irreplaceable visual documentation had been lost.
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Third, illustrating another equally disturbing state
of affairs, the museum has a photograph that was taken in 1938 after the
excavation season at Giza had been completed.
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A photograph of the same area taken 55 years later
indicates that the cemetery had begun to fill back in with blowing and
drifting sand.
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Thus, what we are witnessing is not only the deterioration
of the actual antiquities themselves, but also of the only surviving original
visual records of those monuments. Sites once accessible to scholars
and the visiting public are rapidly disappearing and, as photographic emulsion
peels off old glass plates at an alarming rate, documentation of these
places is disappearing as well.
From these initial realizations grew the ideas
of applying CAD (and associated graphics) programs to attacking this situation
while at the same time using the digitized data for the collection, analysis,
and publication of the ancient sites and then using that data as the foundation
for educational materials.
A number of demonstration and research projects followed
using data supplied to Riseman by the Museum of Fine Arts. The CAD
models of the sites remained the foundation of his work, which included
the process of re-creating the ancient buildings and sites, the process
of visualizing ancient built environments, and the process of building
a multilayer, multimedia experience. |
